Chatting With The Legendary Meryl Streep, Tracey Ullman, & Christine Baranski! #IntoTheWoodsEvent

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So I never dreamed in a million years that I would get to fulfill my dream of meeting Meryl Streep, Tracey Ullman and Christine Baranski in one day. That happened last week I’m thrilled to say thanks to the magical folks at Disney. I had the amazing opportunity to chat with them about their upcoming musical film from Disney Pictures “Into The Woods.” They star in the film together and are all spectacular in their roles. I have never really been star struck by celebrities when I’m about to interview them. I’ve honestly been around celebrities since I was child, But this was Meryl Streep, Tracey Ullman and Christine Baranski! I was a nervous wreck! I was literally shaking before they walked into the room. I had to take a few deep breaths as I was going to hyperventilate.

When they did walk in, they were welcomed with a grand applause (which shockingly enough they were surprised to have gotten believe it or not). I thought they would be used to this as people should applaud when ever these three legends walk into a room in my opinion.

The three women are obviously great friends with amazing chemistry. We all wanted to know how this friendship came to be?

Here is what the legendary ladies had to say:

CHRISTINE:
Where do we begin? Well, Tracy and Meryl are old friends, so you can start there. That’s an old friendship.

MERYL:
Well, I’m a way older friend than Tracy.

TRACEY:
Yes.

MERYL:
I met her when she was 21. We did a movie called Plenty. I was 31. And I thought I’d just met my new best friend, who was my age, because I had no idea she was 21. I think you were 20, maybe, when we started it.

TRACEY:
I was a pop star.

MERYL:
She was a pop star in England. She really was.

TRACEY:
Yes!

MERYL:
Discovered by Paul McCartney…

TRACEY:
He was my mate, yes. And then we worked on Plenty.

MERYL:
You had a couple top 10 hits.

TRACEY:
I did. I did. I was a one-hit wonder here. And an MTV vee-jay. And yeah, we got on great. We ended up in Tunisia…

MERYL:
Yeah, we lived through that.

TRACEY:
Yeah. We broke down in the desert and we flew back together, and the plane the engine went, and we thought we were going to die.

It’s incredible to see these spectacular women just having a ball recalling some of the fun memories they’ve had together over the years. Even the near death experiences they had together they can now laugh at.

MERYL:
The plane engine blew up!

TRACEY:
So we went through these dramatic moments.

MERYL:
Over the Mediterranean.

TRACEY:
It was bad. It was bad.

MERYL:
It was amazing. Mmm. But we stayed together.

TRACEY:
We stayed to together yeah.

MERYL:
In spite of it all. Had kids the same age.

TRACEY:
Kids the same age, yeah. It was nice.

The conversation then switched to how Christine met Meryl and Tracey!

MERYL:
Christine and I knew each other.

CHRISTINE:
We did! We were dynamos in Greece together, on Mama Mia. So then we had to do research by being friends, so we just hung out all the time, doing “research,” so we had a lot of fun with all of that research.

MERYL:
But we’d known each other a hundred years before that.

CHRISTINE:
We have. We have, because we’re theater babes, and we’re Connecticut moms, and our kids are roughly the same age, and all three of us had long marriages, and like, shared, these parallel experiences, and it’s a trick, being an actress, and wife, and mother, and having that longevity. That’s a real achievement, in my opinion. That’s the greatest achievement, not just in career, but holding your life together, and look at Meryl, with four kids, and Tracey.

MERYL:
It’s a tribute to our husbands.

TRACEY:
Yes. Fantastic fathers.

CHRISTINE:
Yes. And our sense of equilibrium. Having Girl friends. It’s great. Then I met Tracy, and it was like, “Oh, wow…”

TRACEY:
Yeah. Dying to meet you.

CHRISTINE:
We didn’t spend nearly enough time together on this movie, because, you know, you have different scenes and plot lines, but we did have one wonderful, long dinner one night in London. And that was great to have .

TRACEY:
And we had one elongated scene where we were all in it.

CHRISTINE:
Yes, that’s true.

TRACEY:
I got to shout at the giant, and we all had that and it took like three days, and we all got really silly, and we were talking a lot. You were in your big platform shoes, and kept falling over that day. And it was great. It was good fun.

Their characters in the film are all like exaggerated versions of parenting methods gone wrong. Being that all three women are mothers we had to know if they felt any similarities to their characters or did any of their kids feel or see some similarities?

MERYL:
(Jokingly says) Oh Yeah…

CHRISTINE:
I hold the girls a little too closely. Yes, perhaps.

TRACEY:
[SINGS] Stay with me…

I was sitting right next to them and joked with the women and Tracey in particular about how her character of Jack’s mom always smacks him in the head and how I wonder if they’re pulling a Jack’s Mom at home.

TRACEY:
Oh yeah… No never!

MERYL:
No, we’re beaten up by our children.

At this point I think Meryl mistook me joking around with them as me asking a question as she actually stopped me from asking a real question by saying I had asked a question already. I was so confused and I sat there literally asking myself did I ask a question? She’s that good! She can literally make you believe you did something you didn’t. If Meryl Streep tells you you asked a question, you asked a question! I’ll believe anything Meryl tells me frankly and I believed I asked a question from that point forward. One does not question Oscar Winner Meryl Streep! lol. She did apologize right after (which she didn’t have to do) which only blew my mind further as how many people in the world can say they met Meryl Streep and also have her apologize to them. No one! That’s just one of the hilarious once in a life time moments I had with Meryl Streep on this day. I Love her so darn much! I digress…

We then proceeded to ask the ladies for a bit of Motherly advice that they would give to young mothers with little kids? What did they do to survive the life of motherhood?

MERYL:
Well, I mean, just speaking for the group, I feel like so much has changed. Raising little kids now is so different from when our children were little kids. I think that’s part of why this film and its warnings and its, you know, overweening care of the mothers and it speaks to this time when children are harder to keep the world out. The worst parts of them out. To keep them in the little tower’s impossible. And all of the bad stuff comes in, and people worried about this film, that it maybe is too dark for kids. Kids know so much now these days. And they’re aware of so much, and yet they’re so resilient, and innately hopeful and that’s sort of what the film is.

TRACEY:
Would we have taken Mabel and Grace to see this? When they were like, six? They would have handled this.

MERYL:
Are you kidding? You’d let them watch Cops.

We all broke out into laughter with Tracey Ullman as she recalled letting Meryl’s daughter watch cops when she was a small child! All three ladies were laughing through most of the interview. It was truly a delight!

MERYL:
When they were seven. And Gracie came home and she said, “Oh.” And then she was imitating, you know the crack addicts, getting pulled by their hair.

TRACEY:
You had the same at your house, watching those movies.

MERYL:
No, never.

TRACEY:
Oscar screeners with Liam Neeson and the wife getting murdered.

MERYL:
No. No.

Again hilarious! It was amazing to hear these stories about how these legendary ladies literally baby sat for each other.

We spent about 20-30 minutes with these incredible women and I honestly could have spent all day with them. It’s truly a full circle moment when you get to meet the women who you grew up watching on tv and on the big screen. It was truly one of the most fun interviews I’ve ever done and it was absolutely a once in a life time moment that I truly will never forget!

At the end of the interview they were kind enough to snap a photo with us and sadly the photo was blurry, but I wanted to share it anyway as how many times will one person have the opportunity to sit at the feet of Meryl Streep, Tracey Ullman and Christine Baranski, NEVER! That’s me in the pink in the picture below. They all loved my necklace by the way and touched it.